Sweet beginnings and bold reds: A Rosh Hashanah wine guide

Mead, apple-infused wine and more

Rosh Hashanah coincides each year with the season when winemakers across the northern hemisphere begin the harvest. It’s easy to forget that a bottle you see on a store shelf or behind a bar was once a bunch of grapes swelled to ripening by the sun, and cooled by night air, but every drop of wine comes from the earth. It’s fitting, then, for wine to have a place in the High Holiday season, when we explore life’s cycles and the earth’s relationship to the divine. Rosh Hashanah is beginning, renewal and new life.

One of the foods most associated with Rosh Hashanah is honey, serving as a symbol of sweetness in the new year. An ancient form of alcohol production is the making of mead — a beverage created from fermented honey — so if you want to put a unique spin on honey’s place at your table, mead could be a fun choice. Laufer Honey Mead ($12.69, Mevushal), produced by Mendel Laufer in California, is an available kosher option. I wouldn’t recommend drinking mead with food, as the sweetness will be somewhat overpowering, but it’s a tasty apéritif that puts a creative spin on a Rosh Hashanah tradition.

Another reimagining of a traditional Rosh Hashanah food is apple-infused wine. Carmel Buzz Apple Moscato ($12.69, Mevushal) is a sweet wine infused with green apple that can make a refreshing pre-dinner sip or function as a dessert wine. You could also consider serving a kosher hard cider from a brand with kosher certification, like J.K. Scrumpy’s or Angry Orchard. A list of which popular hard ciders are kosher is available from star-k.org.

Now that we’ve gotten the funkier picks out of the way, let’s think about dinner. For brisket or another heavy meat dish, consider tempranillo, a versatile red grape that goes through dramatic changes with age. This varietal naturally has a rich fruit flavor, but the Spanish style is let to sit in oak to develop flavors of clove, smoke and vanilla. The four aging categories are Joven, Crianza, Reserva, and Gran Reserva, often ascending both in price and in flavor complexity. (For a red wine, the minimum ages are as follows: Joven is young and has minimal or no time in oak; Crianza has 24 months of age with six or 12 in oak depending on the region; Reserva has 36 months of age with 12 in oak; and Gran Reserva has 60 months of age with 18 in oak).

The Elvi Herenza Rioja Crianza ($27.99, not Mevushal) is a wine that has both earth and fruit flavors that will complement the richness of brisket. From the same producer, the Gran Reserva 2019 ($119.99, not Mevushal) will show a grace and subtlety that a younger wine might lack. There’s something about a holiday like Rosh Hashanah that feels like it requires an older wine — after all, the holiday is more than 2,000 years old.

Malbec can also be a good dinner wine for Rosh Hashanah. Originally from Cahors, France, this grape is now hugely popular in Argentina and is also grown in Israel. The Yaffo Reserve Malbec ($36.99, not Mevushal) comes from the Judean Hills and promises both plum notes and a hint of smokiness from French oak aging. The Chateau Alvignes Cahor 2016 ($24.99, not Mevushal) shows a less fruit-forward expression of Malbec with a smooth finish and a note of spice.

If red wine isn’t your thing but you still want a wine with structure and power, Sancerre might fit the bill. What’s great about Sancerre — sauvignon blanc from the Loire Valley — is that it’s enjoyable for both the person who knows nothing about wine and the person who knows everything. It’s both refined and straightforward, which to me is what French winemakers do best, never sacrificing quality but also not making their products overly complex. Domaine De Panquelaine Sancerre 2025 ($33.99, Mevushal) is an available kosher Sancerre with hints of stone and fruit notes of citrus. Its nearby cousin, Pouilly-Fumé, the same grape from a different part of the Loire Valley, offers a flintiness that can be fun with a white meat dish or a salad. You can get that kosher for $36.99 from Baron De Mamour (Mevushal).

There’s a pageantry and festive atmosphere to Rosh Hashanah that feels like a primer for the solemnity of Yom Kippur. The High Holidays are a reminder that through both good times and bad, we have each other to laugh, cry, and share wine with. Just as winemakers sort through the fruits of the harvest and see what will survive through fermentation and what won’t, the High Holidays invite us to reap the benefits of what was good and face the consequences of what wasn’t. L’shana tova. PJC

Emma Riva is a freelance writer living in Pittsburgh.